


Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (and never brought to mind)

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: F/M, Rare Characters, Rare Pairings, Unusual Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 11:02:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13680372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: News from Sherwood about the present brings to mind the past.





	Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (and never brought to mind)

**Author's Note:**

> Up to 3x02 (Note, in 1x01 "Will You Tolerate This?" I have always assumed Will was approximately seventeen years old.)

Bassam had been surprised when his houseboy had brought the far-from-home Englishman to him, surprised further when the man had requested to speak with Djaq, Saffiya's long-dead twin brother. 

With a shrug, and a wave of his stout finger, the Keeper of the Sultan's Pigeons had instructed the houseboy to fetch the lady Saffiya. 

"There is a Christian pilgrim here asking for Djaq," the boy had told her, "wishing to see his--" the boy gestured to the hanging tag of slivered Sherwood timber she faithfully wore about her neck. In wonderment the boy added, "The man's face has no beard, and his skin is paler than goat's milk." 

She had come immediately, not bothering even to grab her headcovering. 

But the unexpected caller had not been anyone she knew. 

His name was Rorick, he had said, and he was indeed a Christian on Pilgrimage here. He referenced the name of one of his holy brethren back in England, a man called Tuck, who had bade him bring a letter to her, all the way (her heart leapt to hear it) from the shire of Nottingham. 

At that news it had been nearly impossible for her to maintain the courtesy expected in her culture toward visiting guests. All she could do was think of what might be inside the thick papers, sealed with a generous portion of wax and imprinted with an unfamiliar crest. 

 _Thank Allah for Bassam_. It was his dependable cheeriness and usual aplomb that carried her through the rest of the interview, and his part in it alone that she was sure kept the Christian Rorick from sensing her own desire to have him gone so that she might pore over the packet's contents. 

Bassam had even gone so far as to offer the man a place to sleep for the night, but she could see he was somewhat relieved when the Englishman declined it. Housing Will was one thing, offering shelter to an English Christian Pilgrim their neighbors might not (having been occupied by  _Malik-Ric_ 's army not so long ago) view so generously. 

In a shrewd act of reciprocal diplomacy, Bassam had even secured the man's word that he would return again and be willing to carry an answer back to this man Tuck. 

The moment the monk had exited the house's common room, she had exchanged a glance with Bassam, and upon receiving a knowing inclination of his head (and perhaps an indulgent smile as well) in her direction, she fled for well-lit private quarters and delved into the long-hoped-for, yet entirely unexpected words from (she was surprised to find she thought of it so) home. 

With the reading of each additional sentence her mind shouted out the names of the men they had parted from:  _Allan! Much!_  Dear Much!  _John_ , ever-steady John. And Robin. The news of him there on the early pages was not so exultant. She flipped ahead, scanning for his name, hoping that it might reappear further in, just to sight it, just so that she might know he endured his grief--at least until the missive's end. 

* * *

 

 

This was how Will found her, when he had returned from his lessons for the day, where he had been off with the Saracen man he had found to mentor him in his burgeoning understanding of Middle Eastern woodcraft. 

He entered their room, where Djaq was sitting on the wide window ledge that looked out into the one-story house's private courtyard. The intricately honeycombed sandalwood shutters were thrown open. The heat of the outside sun unlocked their heady fragrance, perfuming the room. As she sat in her complete concentration, one of her legs was dangling toward the floor, her extended toe still not quite touching it, the other leg bent at the knee, her wrist resting upon it where she pored over a sheaf of still mostly-folded papers. 

Her posture recalled to his mind days in Sherwood when she might climb a tree and effortlessly drape herself in it just so. At this memory, he smiled. "It is usually with one of Bassam's books I find you so." 

Her face turned, her expression half-distracted by the sound of his voice. 

"I have not seen such a look on you, Wife, since you were devouring Lambert's ledger." 

She gestured to him with great energy. "It is from Much...and Allan...and John. It has come all the way from--" Again she stalled out. 

"Home?" he asked, completing the unspoken thought for her. His own eyes were dancing in similar, sudden jubilation. He crossed the room in two long strides and she swung herself about, both feet inside as they occupied the window ledge now side-by-side. 

He tried to kiss her but she would not tear her eyes away from the paper. He settled on saluting her cheek, even in the act of kissing it finding his own eyes attracted to the pages she held, like a magnet to iron. 

"It says here," she began, without waiting for him to ask, "that they have taken on a man--a holy brother named Tuck, who is acting as their amanuensis." She sensed the momentary disconnect in Will, and explained, "He is the one writing the letter, at Much and Allan and John's dictation." 

Will nodded. "But Robin is not," he shook his head. "...dictating?" 

Reasonably (but also purposely grabbing for comfort where the known-and-expected-to-be-grieving Robin was concerned) Djaq offered, "I am assuming that he is letting the others tell the story." 

"Yes, that seems likely," Will agreed, nodding. Robin always was one to hang back at peculiar moments, let the lads get loud and carry on without him. "I don't imagine Robin is much one for writing unless..." 

"As in the case of his farewell letter to Marian? Before running off to get himself killed by the Black Knights?" 

"Yeah. Unless something very serious is about to happen. After all, it was you he set to writing Lardner's note to King Richard." 

More anxious to get back to the letter in front of them than to reminisce at this moment, Djaq impatiently turned the last page over in her hand, spying a different script than the monk's careful strokes at the lower edge of the final page. Though she had not often seen his handwriting, she recognized it for Robin's. 

The change in penmanship had not escaped Will's observant eye. He grabbed for the last page. She lightly smacked his hand away. 

"We read the end  _at_  the end!" she told him, like a proper school marm. 

He grinned at her, but did not object. "Go on," he encouraged her, his grin not fading, waiting for her to renew her brief summary of what she had managed to read of it before he had arrived. 

"As I said, they have found a like-minded fellow in this Brother Tuck...and a Locksley girl has been forced to take to the forest, named Kate." 

"Kate?" Will asked, a tug on his mind at the name when it was coupled with his home village. 

"Yes, Kate." Djaq knew him well enough to see part of him was about to fall into a possible reverie. "Why?" she asked with a shrug. "Did you know her?" 

"Well, I knew a girl named Kate who often spent summers with her grandparents in Locksley. She had a brother," he recalled, "younger than Luke." 

"A brother?" she further consulted the letter. "Named...?" 

His mind hearkened back. "Matty--Matthew." 

"Matthew," she agreed, nodding where she saw his death listed in the text as part of this Kate's story. "It is the very same." She waited a moment, and then at his further silence, prompted him. "Did you know her well? Did she seem like someone who would fit well...in the gang?" 

 _Kate_ , Will thought to himself on how to answer,  _with the gang? Outlawed and joining Robin Hood?_  He found it hard to hold back a smirk at the notion. 

He held back the smirk, but the shadow of a grim expression settled on his face as his mind recalled to him the last time they had laid eyes on each other. 

* * *

 

 

It had been a summer when Kate's mother had also joined her and her brother in traveling to stay in Locksley with the grandparents (her mother's parents). Kate's mum had been widowed the previous autumn. It was no great secret that most people in the village hoped to see a match before midsummer between her and Locksley's master carpenter, Dan Scarlet. ' _After all_ ', Will had heard said when no one thought that at fifteen he was listening, ' _didn't Dan Scarlet need a mother to his boys?_ ' 

But it had not been Dan Scarlet and Kate's mother who had tried out sparking. Who found themselves trying to sneak small, awkward kisses in the shade of Locksley barns and hovels with always someone likely to discover them at their practicing. No, it had been fifteen-year-old Will, and the widow's daughter, Kate. 

The day came when she had asked him to meet her, beyond Locksley's lake, in the stand of trees nearby the chapel. An invitation no full-blooded Locksley boy could have mistaken for anything other than what it had been: an unchaperoned trip into the woods, from which they two would likely have emerged hand-in-hand, viewed from that afternoon on by those in the village as as good as priest-blessed man and wife. (Such shortcuts necessary when an actual marriage would have cost dearly in payment to Locksley's new Lord Gisborne.) 

Will had been rather more interested in the prospective time in the woods than in the publicly perceived commitment following it. 

Their kisses were still fumbling, far more lip and spittle than were necessary, clumsy hands not quite sure what to grab onto. They crashed through the underbrush like an ungainly draft horse that had wandered from the trail. 

Some of Kate's hair got hung-up on a low branch. The lacings to his trousers had knotted beyond easy loosening. Then, they tumbled into an unexpected small clearing. 

"Perfect!" she had declared, thankful to cease worrying about roots and rash-giving bushes underneath her backside. 

"Brilliant!" Will declared from where he had rolled atop her in their toppling, his eyes (and his mind) no longer attuned to their destination upon originally entering the woods. Leaving her he climbed away, still on all fours, and began to study the clever snare they had stumbled upon. 

Kate's confusion at the unplanned intermission in her deflowering rapidly gave way to annoyance. "You're not gonna touch it," she gasped. "It's a poacher's!" 

Will had not originally planned to touch it, but it was of such a clever design his mind, already of a builder's-bent, called out to understand the mechanism by which it operated better. 

And the only true way to see that was to remove the two rabbits caught by it already. 

Which, despite Kate's protests, he did. "Don't worry," he half-attempted to calm her fears. "No one will know. And that's a rabbit stew for your family,  _and_  mine." 

For a moment her eyes sharpened as they took in the dead animals. Her little brother Matthew had been sickly of late. A meat broth would surely return him to his strength. 

"Here," Will noted the change in her, "hang them both under your apron." 

"It is a great risk," she warned him. 

"With a sweet reward," he attempted to coax her, trying to kiss her cheek and further embolden her in the theft. 

She jerked her cheek out of his reach, but did as he asked, concealing the rabbits underneath the cover of her apron. It was agreed he would exit the wood first, and some minutes later, if no one was watching, she would follow him. 

Everything went amazingly well. The rabbits were skinned and stewed. For one night two families in Locksley again had enough to eat. 

* * *

 

 

Will had always thought it must have been the actual poacher, the one whose trap they had pillaged, who had discovered and ratted them out. But they would never know for sure. 

Gisborne's men had stormed into the Scarlets' dwelling like a forceful, capricious wind. There was no standing up to them. 

The justice was swift, and equally as cruel. His father had accepted the blame, easily detailing the poacher's snare mechanism to his captors (as proof of his guilt) from Will's faithful recounting of it. 

The entire village was made to watch the punishments. Will had been forced into the front row, so close to his father that at the fall of the ax blood had splattered onto what was his only tunic. Kate had stood closely behind him, eyes trained onto his shoulder blades, not watching. 

"We are leaving," she had told him, speaking into those same shoulder blades moments before the punishment was carried out. "We have caused so much wrong," she went on, her head bent in shame. "And experienced none of the sweet you promised, Will Scarlet." Half-heartedly she stamped her foot. "I hope I never see you again." 

As Matthew was known by all to be too ill to run off into the forest, Kate's grandfather, up in years, was decreed to also lose a hand. The amputation never properly healed. He had sickened from it, and shortly died. 

As for Kate, Will had answered her, not knowing she had already moved away from him in the gathered crowd. "There is no wrong in wanting full bellies," he had said through gritted teeth, willing himself to believe it as he watched his father prepare to suffer maiming in exchange for a single pot of stew, a solitary pelt. 

The ax fell, and with it any further thought he might have given to her. His world, in a single chop, reordered. 

Gisborne's soldiers did not prevent his immediately rushing forward once the penalty was carried out, and by the time he had his father at home in his own bed, Kate and her brother Matthew were already out of sight of the village. Will's memory of her already like sand drawn back into the sea, rain absorbed by the ground--forgotten among the landscape. 

* * *

 

 

"And so  _this_  is how you know this girl?" Djaq responded to the kernel he had related to her of his and Kate's acquaintance. "You were nearly wed?" 

"Ah, we were idiot children, my love," he shrugged it off, as he thought it ought to be. "We knew little of the world within Locksley, much less beyond it." 

"You are very cavalier about such a near-betrothal," she teased him, not at all intimidated by the story from his past. " _We_  do not take such things so lightly, here." 

"No," he agreed. "But once you have been hanged by the Sheriff of Nottingham, things often take on a quite different perspective." He shrugged and wrapped an arm around her. "After all, time can change people. Here I am in the Holy Land, with a Saracen for a wife. Certainly the most-gifted sage could have hardly predicted that of any Locksley boy, let alone me. But where Kate is concerned, what I  _do_ know enough to predict is: heaven help Much, and Allan, and Robin." 

"But not John?" 

Will considered. "Something tells me John is probably off spending lots of time in the woods--alone. Now read on," Will directed her with a wave of his finger at the text, "through to the end, and we will find out if I am right." He smiled at her, his heart as pleased as hers, as thirsty for any news of Sherwood. 

And with avid eyes he watched hers scan the written lines as she read aloud, happy with the past they shared, and the ever-widening future they sought to build upon it. 

**The End**


End file.
